Bangert: What does Mitch Daniels want in next Purdue football coach?

Incoming president will have to live with decision to go big on salary, too

Nov. 27, 2012

Mitch Daniels, Indiana governor and incoming Purdue University president, said he'll be one of the most sports-minded presidents the university has had. Here, he greets members of the Purdue Dance Team after the Boiler Gold Rush Boiler Up Rally in August. / By Michael Heinz/Journal & Courier

Which is more shocking in the wake of Danny Hope’s firing at Purdue: that athletic director Morgan Burke is ready to open the checkbook wide to hire the school’s next football coach, or that incoming president Mitch Daniels isn’t in on the conversation?

Take your pick. They’re both pretty amazing — considering Purdue has been ready and willing to scrape the bottom of the pay barrel, relatively speaking, with its football coaching hires in the past and that Gov. Daniels is set to become Burke’s boss in about six weeks.

Burke might not have Daniels on speed dial as he ponders the right fit for Ross-Ade Stadium. And he wasn’t exactly going renegade or stiff-arming questions about a president getting involved in the sporting side of the university. Burke said interim President Tim Sands was in the loop on a decision that can’t wait until Daniels arrives in mid-January. (Sands “may have talked to Gov. Daniels,” Burke said Sunday, “but I don’t foresee Gov. Daniels taking an active role in this.”)

But if Burke is serious about doing considerably better than the $950,000 salary for 2012 in Hope’s contract — the median salary for a Big Ten coach is $2.1 million, according to data collected by USA Today — it’s worth catching up on what Daniels had to say about the arms race in college athletics the last time he was asked in a public setting.

During a September forum in the Stewart Center’s Loeb Playhouse, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb told Daniels, “I’m astounded that no one has asked you the following: Why does this university pay Matt Painter $2.3 million a year? Why does this university pay Danny Hope $1.2 million a year?” (His illustration rounded up the salaries for maximum bonuses and perks for Hope and Painter, Purdue’s basketball coach.) “And what does that say about what’s going on nationwide?”

Daniels gathered himself a bit before saying, “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.”

Daniels told the audience that, as he wound down his time as governor, people asked what he might do next. When they suggested the title university president, Daniels said, he told them: “That couldn’t work.”

“And one of the reasons I’d say that wouldn’t fit was, you know, college athletics is out of control — at least in Division I. It’s filled with excess, money, often hypocrisy, double standards. And I just couldn’t be part of it,” Daniels said. “And if I hadn’t been convinced that Purdue is an outlier to that, I couldn’t have come here.”

Daniels never got around to addressing the actual numbers attached to Painter or Hope’s contracts. (He also didn’t get around to a question about the president’s salary, either. But that’s another story, still waiting for negotiations with the Purdue trustees.)

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But Daniels did lay out a three-point framework for how college athletics ought to work, in an arrangement he said Burke has been able to maintain at Purdue. The athletic department must: 1. Hold up high standards of conduct for everyone involved. “Never embarrass the school.” 2. Guarantee that student-athletes are expected to be students first. “That means real students studying real courses.” 3. Pay for itself.

“Do those three things, then I really want you to win,” Daniels said. “But if you win, and you didn’t do all those three things, we’re going to have to have a discussion.”

For good measure, Daniels let on that “Purdue will not have had a bigger sports fan in this job since Fred Hovde, maybe.”

Burke is under pressure to compete — get the Boilermakers to the Rose Bowl and get fans back in Ross-Ade stands. Big money is on the line. The smaller Purdue sports that football helps subsidize are on the line. And so is more than a bit of pride.

Let’s say the next football coach comes with a Big Ten average, $2.2 million price tag — more than double what Hope earned in any year at Purdue. Let’s say Burke commits more money to the rest of the football coaching staff. That might be what it takes to bring a winner to Ross-Ade Stadium, to restore the excitement and the respect. But what’s the message beyond the ticket office and the recruiting trips?

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You’d better bet the biggest sports fan in Hovde Hall — the one with a three-pronged notion of sporting success in higher education — would be put in a position to defend the head coach’s salary before a faculty senate still buzzing about the university’s administrative bloat (see: Purdue’s prominent play in a national Bloomberg article earlier this month) versus Purdue’s commitment to academics.

During that forum with Brian Lamb in September, Daniels let on that he was a Burke fan and that it was a “lucky break for me” that the athletic director happened to be part of the presidential search committee. Burke apparently was able to talk Daniels through what Purdue athletics were all about in a way that moved the governor from reluctant to comfortable about the university’s top job.

Burke should invite Daniels in again — and in a very public way — to make sure they’re all about reading from the same playbook on a big-money hire that could mean a fundamental shift for Boilermaker football. And for Purdue, as a whole.